One example of this type of connector is used in the circuit of an air bag of a motor vehicle. As shown in FIG. 6(A), this type of connector comprises a plurality of female terminal fittings 2 housed within a female housing 1, and a short-circuiting terminal 3 provided within a housing chamber 4 in order to short-circuit the female terminal fittings 2. A corresponding male housing 5 comprises tab-shaped male terminal fittings 6 which fit together with the female terminal fittings 2, and a short-circuit cancelling member 7 capable of being inserted between the female terminal fittings 2 and the short-circuiting terminal 3. When the two housings 1 and 5 are in a separated state, the female terminal fittings 2 are short-circuited by the short-circuiting terminal 3. When the two housings 1 and 5 are fitted together, the male and female terminal fittings 2 and 6 make contact. As shown in FIG. 6(B), the short-circuiting cancelling member 7 is inserted between the short-circuiting terminal 3 and the female terminal fittings 2, causing the short-circuiting terminal 3 to bend, thereby cancelling the short-circuiting of the female terminal fittings 2. Such a general arrangement is well known.
However, the short-circuiting cancelling member 7 protrudes from the fitting face of the male housing 5 and, consequently, there is the danger that it may come into contact with foreign objects and thereby become bent or otherwise damaged. In order to prevent this from happening, the cancelling member 7 may be made thicker in order to increase its strength. In this case, however, the short-circuiting terminal 3 would be required to bend to a correspondingly greater extent. Consequently, the height of the housing chamber 4 would have to be increased in order to maintain a space to allow the bending of the short-circuiting terminal 3 and thus a larger housing would be required. This would result in an inevitable increase in the amount of material used, and thus cost.
The present invention has been developed after taking the above problem into consideration, and aims to present a connector in which the necessary bending stroke of the short-circuit terminal can be provided without increasing the size of the housing.